


Innocent Son

by The Ghosts (rcs)



Category: Ragnarok Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-07
Updated: 2011-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rcs/pseuds/The%20Ghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An origin story that is entirely too long and pathetic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innocent Son

After three summers, he realizes it's a ritual. His mother sits at her vanity when they draw close to a village, with her back to her children and her dark hair spilling down her dressing gown. She picks up the rouge and, with a steady hold on the brush, paints up her lips. Their snug wooden home creaks and rocks under their feet, the wagon team pulling them over uneven road, but the movement never jars her strokes. It fills him with a strange pride. His siblings buzz around the cabin -- occupied with their own preparations, trying not to jumble into him or each other -- ignoring her spellwork entirely. He sits alone on the floor, captivated as his mother weaves her hair into a fitting style, elegant. She's the picture of grace as she sweeps it up off her neck, pinning it into place with the precision of a surgeon.

His is the most beautiful mother; there's just no question.

When her hair was done up and her make-up on, she'd stoop to kiss him, cup his round little face, brush his ruddy colored hair and call to him. Then she'd have his eldest sister help her with her costume, do up her laces, put on the layers of vibrant fabrics. And then, when her colorful skirts were on, they'd walk the rest of the way into town, her skirts swinging as she moved. They'd swirl around when she danced, sang with father's guitar, the bells on the hem jingling. His siblings would perform their practiced tricks and gags. This is how the ritual always progressed.

This is why he asks what's wrong, in a smear of language that only a toddler and his mother can know, when she pulls him into her lap. When she holds him tight to her chest, still except for the beat of her heart. When there's no answer, he twists to look at his siblings, repeating his question for his equally silent family. It's his father who breaks the quiet.

"Halwe," he murmurs, the voice that cracks the air weaker than he has ever heard it. "Maman has an errand. Do you want to follow after her?" It was barely a question.

Mechanically, his father helps fold him into a cloak, one too warm for this morning, and presses a bit of warm bread and cheese into his grasp. "You'll be good," he whispers it like an order, running a rough hand over his son's hair, smoothing away the bedhead. His mother, similarly adorned, takes his small hand in hers and wanders out into the haze. As they trot away, he glances back at the faces of his family who look on after them, pale and long, and it sends an odd chill up his spine. One that leaves him huddling into his mother's hip.

They walk for hours, sometimes leaving two sets of prints behind in the soft earth, sometimes with his mother lifting the tired and squirming little boy to her shoulder.

Familiarity gets lost along the way, leaving only scenery he doesn't know, scenery which melts together as they go, field becoming valley becoming glen becoming forest. He fights for his mother's attention, asking questions and making up little songs and rambling stories. She doesn't react to any of it though, keeping her gaze straight ahead and guiding him further into the dark of the woods. For the fifth or sixth time, he asks how much farther they have to go and the grip on his hand loosens for a half-second. "Just a little," she answers, shoulders quaking as her hold tightens.

And she's telling the truth, of course. The few minutes more they wander, winding through the trees, carries them to a clearing with two fallen trees. She tugs him along as she inspects the area, as if searching for something important. He offers to help with a smile, but she doesn't seem to hear him. Instead she hoists him up onto one moss-laden trunk and he giggles at the cold held there, kicking his legs against the wood. "Halwe," she breathes, hand leaving his to adjust buttons and tug his cloak closer around him. "I have to..."

"Maman?"

There's a hint of tears in her eyes when she presses a kiss to his forehead, wraps her arms around him and squeezes tight like he'll turn to smoke. He hugs back the best he can, with short arms clutching her waist, but he's not sure why. He's happy for it though; she's warm and her clothes have the pleasant smell of bergamot. "Will you wait here?" There's only one answer and it comes nodded enthusiastically against her. He's a good boy after all. "You have to wait right here," she dictates in a firmer tone and he nods a second time. Slowly, inch-by-inch, she pulls back from him, arms coming off his shoulders and falling limp beside her.

He thinks, for the beat between her untangling and turning away from him, that her beautiful face, that face he's watched her practiced fingers blush and perfect countless times, looks ashen. "Maman?" Her warm skin, with the pretty reds and the soft browns, suddenly grayed. "Maman!" He calls to her, concerned, but he won't move, won't disobey her. His palms slap against the peat and he watches her disappear into the treeline, watches as her pinned hair begins to slip as she rushes out of view. " _Maman_!"

He calls for her until night creeps out and birdsong is replaced with cries from beasts he can't name. Finally, breathless, he breaks his promise and slides off his perch to the forest floor below, fumbling into the hollow beneath the overgrown trunks. He curls into the dark earth, his sole refuge from the wandering kind, the soil giving some small warmth and a barrier between the open channel of the night air and the soft crying that takes him to sleep.

When the sun breaks through the canopy, he wakens with an empty stomach and swollen eyes. He asks again for his mother as he creeps out, voice timid, uncertain. As the remnants of sleep give way to clarity, his cries grow until he is baying -- _Maman! Maman!_ \-- and he only breaks his call when his throat, bone dry, sends him choking and coughing. He snatches up what little moisture hugs the nearby fronds, swallowing the precious few draughts he can find, and plucks fat yellow berries off the shrubs for sustenance.

This too becomes a ritual.

When the moon and sun have done their dance more times than he knows the numerals for, he burrows deep into the earth, deep into hollow, body numb and starving for warmth. His stomach turns, twists and knots so much it works up what little he's scavenged, leaving him to lay in sick and the mud it makes. He paws at his eyes, feeling them grow hot, hot, _hotter_ as the minutes stretch on, tears streaming freely down his burning face.

As he writhes and weeps in the dirt, the forest cries out, its voice a thunderous roar and he feels the soil quake beneath its force. Frightened, he too screams out, not any of the words his mother taught him, not names of stars or lyrics or anything human. It's nothing the world has known, it's monstrous and his blood pounds in his ears at the ferocity. Everything falls silent save him; his cry rings out until his jaw aches. It is then he feels the heavy tremorous footfalls, can hear them charging, _galloping towards him_ , full force. The earsplitting thrash of his heart and the barreling racer become a single beat, reverberating throughout the glade, decimating the surrounding trees until all that remain are the fallen two. The palpitations and trample cease. He steels himself and squints out into the dark through bleary gold, out onto a crimson figure haloed by falling stars. For a moment, all is still, the wight and his core among the count. Then the beast extends a claw down towards him, long, spindly digits wrapping thrice around his forearm, tightening and yanking him to the surface. The exhausted body falls without a fight and the boy tumbles headfirst into dark unknown.

\--

He wakes to muffled voices, words unfamiliar as the ceiling above him, and he slowly realizes he is not in the Serpent's belly or strewn across the cobblestones at Volos' feet. Little hands finger the edge of the warm, soft quilts covering him. They're studded with unrecognizable embroidery, with things that may be bats or birds or horses for all he knows, and the smell of camphor. Light and the clank of metal filters in through the window, though the curtains are drawn shut and the glass pane is down. The scrape of approaching boots draws his attention and the chattering beyond the door comes through clearer.

"Little fool is lucky to be alive, gnawing on the laurel like he did." The first speaker, a lady with strange pitch, sounds faintly disenchanted with his survival.

"Couldn't say it nicer, could y'Miru? 'Hors be praised he didn't _drop dead_ '! Something like that." And the second, a man whose voice rings deeper than his father's own, is soured by her thoughts and biting at her.

"That's no god of mine, so I've no thanks for him. Sooner pray to the old hags of your land come take him away."

"You--"

"I _won't_. Not since I've wasted good medicine on the rat. This is just conversation."

They bicker heatedly like that for several minutes, the man being interrupted and trampled for the duration, with the discussion coming to a head when she lays down a mandate and he stomps away, opinion clear in every creaking floorboard.

The doorknob turns and in she steps, all pallid and titian plaits, with unearthly blue eyes focused on him. "Eavesdropping?" His heart sinks with every step she takes forward. "Or maybe you don't speak this language. That'll be troublesome for the others, they only know the local color."

She drops down comfortably on the settee just out of reach, face bearing all kinds of illegible messages. He can't help but stare, to try and decipher the mysterious implications adults hold in the twitches of their mouths and the angle of their eyes, his fists tightening on the comforters all the while. She seems to take pity on him for this and gives an affable smile.

"I found you, miserable, _delirious_ in the mountains. Your parents never taught you about berries, did they? Yellow, soapy ones? You're quite lucky. Most idiots twice your years would dead." Shame colors his face at her words and she gives a self-satisfied chuckle. "I've had my subordinates ask around about you, see if there's anyone to claim you, but..." He stares intently at the bunched up stitches, deciding to focus on what is most likely a three-winged crow, doing all he can to keep tears from welling up under her trained gaze.

"But until then, you'll remain our charge." She's given an obedient sniffle in response.

"What do they call you?" Finally, he raises his eyes to meet hers, watery gold under dark lashes and he snuffles, hearing his family in the back of his mind, calling, " _Halwe, Halwe..._ " His tongue slowly works the syllables through his teeth.

"Hal... we..."

Taking this as babytalk, she fills in the gaps on her own, however uncertainly. "Halloween?" He gives a small wince, but doesn't object. It has none of the story. It wasn't the name of a great, great, great grandfather who had become a king's minstrel, his father never taught him the marks for it, it wasn't sung to him by his sisters and his mother never whispered it pressed to the crown of his head. Those things were gone now, even if the woman had tried, in her own strange way, to keep his hopes whole. He began to bury Halwe deep in the earth of that far hollow. After three summers, he accepts his death with a nod.

"Halloween, this is home of the Red Colored Stars and all the people you find here are apart of that. Even you." As she delves into specifics, decorum and strata, all manner of puzzling conversations, his mind drifts to his mother's final embrace and he wishes briefly he'd been defiant then if ever.

\--

Halloween grows up to be an outspoken, magnetic, troublesome man. The patriarch of his guild regards him as he would a plague, though they both understand there's a love to it when Balthasar chases him up the steeples and around the bends. His closest companions are women, both the ones he beds and the ones who are like sisters, his comrades-in-arms, untouchable and infinitely precious. He learns to create, working ore into metal into weapons, with the clamor of hammers and the spray of red hot sparks his friends and enemies. Mostly he grows up happy enough. He becomes a man who packs up on whims and wanders, selling and trading to make scratch for his druthers and for the guild headed by that terrifying witch he owes a life-debt.

But he doesn't forget his heritage or how he came to be so obligated. So when he wanders the city streets heading home and he sees a dancing girl with an hourglass figure and a swirl of skirts and bells instead of gauze and gold, he'll stop and watch her, trepidant. He'll hold his breath and let himself wonder for just a moment, the moment before the dancer turns to reveal none of the glamour he knew. And then he'll leave the square, find some pretty blonde and an alley or he'll find the way home to his girls, the ones who put him best at ease with laughter and pouting and gossip and sweets, and pretend he didn't see a dark haired beauty dancing there that night.

  



End file.
